I. Technical Field
The present invention relates to validating integrated circuit designs built with encrypted silicon IP blocks. Furthermore, the present invention relates to establishing a low cost silicon IP usage and verification platform.
II. Background
Modern electronics circuit designs are now so complex that circuit designers had to resort to computer system-aided design tools to complete the circuit designs in reasonable time frames. Once a design is committed to silicon production, it's too late and too expensive to even consider not getting it right the first time. In the past, the first production prototypes were debugged in target hardware. Now with computer system aided design tools, the circuits can be simulated and checked while still only manifested as software in design files.
As recently as 20-30 years ago, whole functional parts like printer controllers, direct memory access controllers, serial data input/output units, and microprocessors were individually packaged integrated circuit (IC) chips that could be wired together on printed circuit boards (PCB's). These IC chips could be freely selected from various manufacturers. Each chip included an implied license for purchase and use by anyone.
Nowadays the consumer electronic market requests system electronic companies to deliver more compact, more functional, and more power efficient and cost effective devices. To meet the new demand, system electronic companies no longer integrate individual chips on PCB's to build the devices, but instead adopt a new methodology, called as system on chip (SOC), to design and manufacture chips to build the devices. As a result, system electronic companies request other electronic companies to provide silicon intellectual property (IP) blocks to be integrated in their chip circuit designs.
Silicon IP is now widely used in integrated circuit designs, it has increased circuit developers' productivity and enabled them to more quickly complete designs and to focus their engineering resources on their core competencies. Silicon IP products are relatively easy to copy, forge, and re-design, because they are stored and transferred in Graphic Data System II (GDSII), Open Artwork Systems Interchange Standard (OASIS), and other standardized format layout database electronic files.
Faster easy designs made possible by silicon IP also makes strong incentives for unauthorized use, re-use, transfer or sale of these items. IP security is always a big issue and concern to Silicon IP providers. As a result, Silicon IP providers prefer to do business with big companies with good credit and high volumes in production. Otherwise, they resort to initially providing abstract type IP layouts. Then the original IP layout is substituted in replace the abstract one just before mask-making for fabrication.
But both of the business methods have problems, for the first method, silicon IP providers compete for a very limited market, it is difficult to win business accounts and still see a good profit margin. Small semiconductor startups and design houses need the IPs, but their credit is not usually good enough, IP providers are unwilling to do business with them. When IP providers do agree to provide their IPs, small companies are required to pay expensive license fees up front, it is a big burden on their tight budgets.
For the second business method, IP providers need to do silicon fabrication, silicon testing and prepare model libraries before their IP products are released, it is a big cost to the IP providers. On the other side, the IP product customers do not like the abstract version IP layout at all, the reason is the same IP may behave differently within customer side integrated circuit design from the standalone block when it is tested on the provider side, and the IP user has no way to test it out by using his own proven verification flow. For it is expensive to make photo masks and fabricate a test chip, without a complete full chip verification, it is indeed very risky for IP product customers to use the abstract version IP in their designs.
The integrated circuit design industry is in dire need of finding a solution, so that IP providers can achieve a much broader market and provide their IP products securely to all developing stage companies, and meanwhile IP product customers (big or small) all can easily get the IPs at a low cost and verify them by using the same methodology as they use to verify their own internal blocks.
In U.S. Pat. No. 8,117,661, “Encryption based silicon IP protection”, the present inventor, Weidong Zhang, describes a method and system for protecting silicon IPs from unauthorized use, transfer and sale. IP providers are enabled to protect their IP products, and to safely do business with any electronic companies. Because the IPs can be so well protected, there is little risk of IP loss. To promote their IP usage by some promising startup companies, IP providers could even provide their IP products for free, and meanwhile, if any of the startup companies could succeed, IP providers can get a huge reward later through lucrative royalty charges. The technology described can serve as a corner stone to setup a new IP usage and delivery platform. But on the other side, even though the EDA companies, such as California based Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Synopsys, Inc. and Mentor Graphics Co., all provide various verification tools to validate integrated circuit designs, there is no method or system that can verify integrated circuit designs built with encrypted silicon IP blocks.
When verifying an integrated circuit design that is built with encrypted IP blocks, the verification tools not only need to find all the design errors, which include the errors inside the encrypted silicon IP blocks, but also need to protect the circuit design and other confidential information in the encrypted silicon IP blocks. The integrated circuit design industry needs to find a method to solve the new verification requirements, so that the industry could complete to establish a low cost IP usage and verification platform, which can benefit the whole IC industry, and can promote new technologies and new startup companies. The integrated circuit industry can experience a big development with the new business platform established.